The AUSL Plans To Do What Other Pro Softball Leagues Couldn’t

Cheri Kempf knows exactly how hard it is to sustain a professional women’s sports league.

She was the commissioner of the now-defunct National Pro Fastpitch league.

During her tenure, the NPF’s league office had two full-time employees, one of whom was Kempf.

It launched in 2004 and went through rounds of expansion and contraction, but didn’t have the television contracts or budget to sustain itself long term.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came and canceled the 2020 and 2021 seasons, the league folded.

It was around this time that she received a call from Jon Patricof, the co-founder and CEO of Athletes Unlimited, an organization founded in 2020 that has been attempting to establish pro women’s leagues across various sports.

Patricof reached out to Kempf for her expertise, and right away she could tell that Athletes Unlimited had advantages that the NPF never did.   

“That included it having the financial structure behind all of that as the foundation, so that is something that professional softball in this country has never seen, certainly to that degree,” said Kempf, who is now the AUSL’s chief broadcast officer and executive producer. “The NPF really was just a fraction of any of that, in terms of budget and league office and enablement.”